Exporting and importing vDisks

Mar 08, 2017

Provisioning Services allows for the exporting and importing of both versioned and unversioned vDisks, from an existing store to a store in a different farm.

Note: If importing VHDXs that were not exported using Provisioning Services, all differencing disks must first be merged to a base disk using third party tools, then the new VHDX base disk can be imported.

Exporting vDisks

To export a vDisk:

Note: When deleting a vDisk that will be exported, be sure to export the vDisk first, then copy the resulting XML file to the new location before deleting it from the original location.

Right-click on the vDisk in the Console, then select the Export menu option. The Export dialog appears.

Select the version to export from the drop-down menu, then click OK. The manifest file is created in the Store.

Importing vDisks

A vDisk or vDisk chain of differencing VHDX files can be imported into a store if:

The VHDX being imported does not already exist in the store and both the highest version number of the VHDX and associated manifest files match, and if the VHDX chain includes a base image, and that base image version number matches the base image version in the manifest file.

The VHDX does exist in the store but the imported version number in the associated manifest file is greater than the existing VHDX version number.

To add or import an existing vDisk to a site:

Copy the vDisk and any associated properties files to shared storage, if they do not already exist there.

In the Console tree pane, right-click on the Store or a vDisk Pool, then select the Add or Import Existing vDisk... menu option. The Add or Import Existing vDisks dialog appears.

Select the store to search for vDisks from the Store to search drop-down menu.

Select the server to use to search for vDisks from the Server to use for searching drop-down menu, then click Search. All vDisks in the store display in the Add checked vDisks to the vDisk Pool.

Check those vDisks that should be added to the vDisk pool.

Optionally, check Enable load balancing for these vDisks to enable load balancing on Provisioning Servers that provide this vDisk to target devices.

Click Add to add the vDisk(s) to the vDisk pool.

Adding vDisk Versions

To add a vDisk version to a site:

Copy the vDisk and that vDisks any associated properties files to shared storage, if they do not already exist there.

In the Console tree pane, right-click on the Store or a vDisk Pool, then select the Add vDisk Versions menu option. The Add vDisk Versions dialog appears.

Select the store to search for vDisks from the Store to search drop-down menu.

Select the server to use to search for vDisks from the Server to use for searching drop-down menu, then click Search. All vDisks in the store display in the Add checked vDisks new versions.